Thursday, October 29, 2009

I was trying to find a good live clip for "Young Bride" off their 2006 album, but none was to be found.. which is unfortunate because this video kinda sucks, and I'm usually skeptical of songs that sound like this (referring to melodramatic "indie-rock" which usually includes trumpets or violins or some shit..) But these guys do it the right way.

The earlier clips that were posted from at.the.drive.in, Green Day and Interpol should probably be a good indicator that I am currently in full nostalgia mode for the early 2000's. The earliest parts of any decade are becoming more noteworthy to me, usually because they're such strange and forgotten times.. 1980-1982, 1990-1992, and now 2000-2002.. A 3-year span which seems so distant, and yet was definitely less than 10 years ago.

Continuing with this theme, here's a few PJ Harvey clips off Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea, her best stuff IMO..

Monday, October 19, 2009

I thought this was Death Cab which would have made me hate them more than I already do. I immediately felt it in my gut the second I first saw this Blackberry commercial they're playing like 400 times a day with an annoying "indie-rock" Juno-friendly cover of "All You Need Is Love" (with a different time signature than the original, probably because most modern "indie rock" bands don't know what the fuck 7/4 is). So whoever does marketing for Blackberry got some band called Daytona Lights to record it in the same style that Death Cab would have, which naturally makes me want to do myself in.

I'm really drunk and it's 1AM on a Saturday night, so honestly, what better time could there possibly be to post the top 5 music videos ever made? Fuck it. I'm down if you are.

#5 Aphex Twin “Windowlicker” (Chris Cunningham, 1999)It’s got the narcissism, the bling, the women being objectified, the limousine (38 windows in length), and in its highly quotable 4-minute intro, it’s got 127 uses of profanity (including 44 uses of “fuck”). And of course, it’s got The Face: the eerie Cheshire grin of Richard D James. By the time the song starts, it’s clear that the two windowlickers from the intro have been in The Twin’s world all along, and never stood a chance against its demonic master.

Six months earlier, Monster Magnet’s “Space Lord” was partially the same concept: The most extravagent rock-n-roll videos of the time were hiphop videos. Chris Cunningham essentially took that idea and transported it via spaceship approximately ten million galaxies parallel to wherever Ma$e’s “Feels So Good” was shot, gathered together grotesque masks and digital art, and discovered a world where Aphex Twin has become the greatest rock star who ever lived.

P.S. That one shot with the slow motion champagne bottle is A-fucking-plus.

#4 Sigur Ros “Vidrar Vel Til Loftarasa” (Celebrator, 2001)Sigur Ros and slow motion shots are kind of like peanut butter and jelly at this point - such a classic combination. I always figured the clothes and attitudes of this video were of present day Iceland, but it turns out the setting is in the 1950’s, a time when hope of a love such as theirs (the pair of 12-year-old dudes who star in the video) was never something society would even consider, let alone accept. There are so many stand-out images included here: The porcelain dolls, representing hope; the Holy Bible, tragically symbolizing denial; a bottle with the alien-fetus image from Ágætis Byrjun printed on it, which doesn’t really represent anything other than a subtle and awesome way to incorporate Sigur Ros into the story. (All four band members also make individual brief appearances.) Although this 11-minute song has been shortened to 7 minutes for the video, the final 45-seconds are here intact, probably the best part of the song, when Sigur Ros decides to increase the tape speed by a milli-fragment, creating this aura of sudden devastating cruelty, compared to how otherworldly the previous 10 minutes had progressed. Celebrator’s images oblige in this video’s heartbreaking conclusion.

NOTE: Oh my bad.. the last section of the song does not fully appear in the video version. It still rules though.

#3 Radiohead “Paranoid Android” (Magnus Carlsson, 1997)Robin’s bizarre adventures are normally accompanied by his own calming soliloquy and some quiet triphop music (one favorite being his trip to the grocery store). However, his most famous adventure took place after Magnus Carlsson was commissioned to send Robin on yet another undertaking, this time with only Radiohead’s upcoming single as the soundtrack. Parlophone were hoping for “another video like ‘Street Spirit,’” but Radiohead were adament on going with a cartoon. Luckily for them, Robin was more than willing. And luckily for Robin, “Paranoid Android” just happened to be a brilliantly unorthodox mindfuck of a single with a whole range of darkness and creepiness to accompany his discovery.

The following summer, this video became largely overshadowed after the premiere of the enormously popular “November Rain” video, which had an easier narrative to follow and included several equally iconic and gorgeous shots, such as Slash’s guitar solo outside of the church. At the end of 1993, the third part of this apparent trilogy concluded with “Estranged,” the 12th (that’s correct.. TWELFTH) and final video released to promote Use Your Illusion, and the least popular video from this trilogy, now regarded as a bloated triumph after its inclusion in several of those MTV “Most Expensive Video” specials.

While the original lineup were infinitely badass in their earlier videos, and gloriously coroding throughout Use Your Illusion, “Don’t Cry” marks the only time these two eras properly intersect, creating the quintessential Guns N’ Roses clip. Confusion, death, chaos, drugs, revenge, anger management, Los Angeles, the downfall of hair metal... So many themes, so many brilliant sequences... Axl drunkenly stumbles through a cemetary with a gun in the middle of a blizzard. Slash drives a car off a cliff with his girlfriend inside of it and plays a guitar solo above the wreckage. Axl and Shannon Hoon run around on top of a skyscraper, and someone holds a sign that says “Where’s Izzy?” (He had left the band weeks earlier.) The band’s model girlfriends get into a bar fight, smashing glasses. Axl’s triple-personality disorder is physically shown on screen. And finally, he becomes reborn again. 5-minute video clips are rarely this dense, a huge part of why “Don’t Cry” still demands repeated viewings. In terms of 80’s metal excess, it doesn’t get more rock n’ roll than this.

#1 Jay-Z “99 Problems” (Mark Romanek, 2004)With the exception of Coldplay’s “Speed Of Sound,” “99 Problems” stands as the last music video Mark Romanek has directed so far, capping off perhaps the most stunning videography of any modern video director. His resume includes Michael & Janet’s “Scream” clip, Fiona Apple’s "Criminal," Johnny Cash’s “Hurt,” and NIN’s “Closer” & “The Perfect Drug.” Romanek’s videos are like watching an out-of-order slideshow, except the pictures all happen to be brilliant and speak a thousand words each... And the rushed photographer only has 5 minutes to show 3 carousels worth of these brilliant slides, so that by the time it’s over you’ve been given such a sensory overload that many of the images are permanently burned into your brain. The afformentioned videos are all examples of this, Romanek’s signature style. However, “99 Problems” is the grittiest of all of these.

“99 Problems” was also intended to be Jay-Z’s final single from his last album before retiring from hiphop. Had he never returned from retirement only 2 years later, the video’s conclusion may have gone down as possibly the the most explosive swansong of alltime, a graphic slow-motion sequence in which the rapper himself is shot multiple times by off-camera assailants and presumably murdered.

Jay-Z originally wanted direction from Scorsese or Tarrantino, but Rick Rubin convinced Jay to call upon Romanek. Jay’s only real input was that he wanted “powerful images” of Brooklyn, a phrase that actually downplays the immense weight of these shots, shockingly surpassing that found within Public Enemy’s “Fight The Power” video from 15 years earlier, and sort of revamping the same concept for post-9/11 New York.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

The past few posts have been building to the "decade end" features which will hopefully be arriving here quickly over the next month.. They're all going to be from one person's perspective, but I'll be speaking of Taste My Kids using plural pronouns such as "we" and "ours" to make the lists seem like they're worth more than they actually are (a writing tactic I used often on the old version of this website). Today's list is regarding the decade in animation.. I'm a huge fan of animation shorts, but to be honest I really only know the cartoons that were made from the most well-known animators, and a few from lesser-known animators who were nominated for Oscars.. So this won't be an incredibly huge list..

"I Met The Walrus" (2007)The audio is taken from a 1969 interview conducted by a 14-year-old Beatle fan who snuck into John Lennon's hotel room.

"Rejected" (2000)In terms of cult-classic shorts, this is as good as it gets. (Youtube incorrectly labels this as an Oscar winner, although it was nominated.)

"Broodwich" (2003)You can probably tell at this point that our knowledge of animation shorts is not especially vast, since it's only short #5 and we're already reverting to clips from Adult Swim. However, we've always preferred actual ink and paper animation (or stop motion) as opposed to Pixar clips or ones that utilize CGI.. which is why clips such as Presto (the short that got played before Wall-E) will not qualify for this list.

In the case of the "Broodwich" episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force (a series which often utilizes computer effects), this deserves inclusion simply based on its darkness, and the abrupt ending.

NOTE: The embedding from the website I copied the link from sucked dicks, so instead the youtube clip is this "best of" thing someone threw together. Try this link for the full episode...

"More" (1998) & "Hell Bent" (2001)The 1998 stop-motion short "More" was given a different light in 2001 when the soundtrack was altered to instead include Kenna's then-unreleased new single "Hell Bent." The short was also edited differently in order to synch with the song. Aside from that whole White Stripes/Legos thing, this was probably the best animated music video of the decade.

"The Meaning Of Life" (2005)Animation shorts built around comedy are normally our favorites. However, there seem to be many (often times those which are nominated for Oscars) which use cartoons or stop motion to express something darker, more thought-provoking, or more artistic. If there's a line between the comedy shorts and the more artistic shorts, "The Meaning Of Life" is probably the line itself. The Meaning Of Life has the ability to blow minds apart, and the seemingly simple pencil drawings actually become somewhat disturbing at parts, so brace yourself if you must. This is Don Hertzfeldt's 12-minute masterpiece, pieced together over the course of 5 years.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

This may be hard to believe, but there was a time - somewhere between 2000 and 2001 - when a statement like "This one's for our boys in Coldplay" wouldn't have sounded quite as lame preceding a live TV performance. This clip is the proof, partially because Coldplay's Parachutes has aged with far more grace than their subsequent yawnfests, and partially because at.the.drive.in are one of the most incredibly fucking amazingly powerful live acts of the past 10 years.

Friday, October 9, 2009

In my last post, I started to mention a "10 TV performances," which I've decided will be unveiled soon, along with 2 separate "10 TV Moments" lists. They will probably be the only "decade end" things I'll post here, which I figured would be fun since they'll all come complete with video clips.

This clip of Green Day's "Waiting" doesn't exactly fall in the same category as "Forget The Swan," but is still noteworthy as it was probably Green Day's last TV performance from their classic era. At this point, it's a bit difficult to recall classic Green Day existing during this decade, but it did happen.

Monday, October 5, 2009

I found a link to the Dr. Octagon album, and I decided this was definitely something I should share as soon as possible. It's possibly my favorite hiphop album of alltime..

Visit this link or visit Cosmic Hearse which I finally got to peruse last night.. I spent about 2 hours digging through their album collection, and I ended up grabbing at least 10 of them before I decided I was too tired to stay awake any longer.

I've been considering a new direction for Taste My Kids as of late, and album-blogging, or mix-blogging, might be something worthy.

I think what makes Cosmic Hearse my favorite website/blog/internet-thing of the moment is that their collection is made up of probably 85% blackmetal and deathmetal albums, so you know that when you find anything other than those 2 genres, it's gonna be severely badass. Here's a few more that I would highly recommend..

what's it?

TASTE MY KIDS compiles recommendations for a happier and healthier existence, most often in the form of "best-of" lists, youtube posts, album or movie reviews, and various scribblings. We lived on Geocities starting in August 2000. In January 2009, times got tough and posts were on hiatus until a new host could be located. Geocities eventually died anyway, and now we live on blogspot. True story.